


Close To You

by canditheawesome



Category: Tangled: The Series (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Death, little graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 10:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16911603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canditheawesome/pseuds/canditheawesome
Summary: Varian engages the reader, recanting a tale of a father and son torn by the death of the woman they both loved best and the wintry chill that reminds them of it every single year.





	Close To You

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction that ties directly in with an RP ring I am part of on Tumblr, specifically pertaining to a roleplay called Do You Even Go Here, so it is set in a Modern AU. Owing to this, some things about the characters have changed but I have still tried to stay as true to their basic essence as possible. 
> 
> This was a request done for my friend Chi, and if you are reading this hun I really hope you like it. (=

Have you ever awoken to find that your brain has latched onto an abstract concept, a shapeless idea that formed in your dreams and that you cannot help but fixate on until you figure out what it is, and more pressingly, why it was important enough to shock you into awareness?

I have.

The tonality of such a notion, the indistinct cadence of it, caught and hung in my mind Christmas morning back in Freshman year, leaving me with a wistful ache in my chest and a myriad of unanswered questions that all looped back in on each other, creating a web of confusion as I drifted downstairs, already prepared for what my father was going to say. See, for many years now, my dad has had this rather...err...what’s the right word for it? Um...we’ll say interesting. Yes, he’s had an interesting habit of bringing up my mother whenever it snows and then annoyingly--you know what? We’ll get to that. 

Forgive me for this because I'm not a playwright by any means but Miss Sunflower believes that it will do me some good to change up the style of things here so I can get past this emotional constipation, as she so artfully put it. 

Now would probably be a good time to mention that you're stupid diary and I hate writing in you but Rapunzel is watching me so here goes nothing. 

Anyway, the conversation usually goes something like this…

[ _Setting: Living Room_

_Enter me, stage right_

_My father is staring out the French doors at the flurry of snow settling in the yard, blanketing everything in white. His expression is one of deep contemplation, his forehead wrinkling as he furrows his brow._

**Me:** Dad?

**My father:** …

**Me, more insistently:** Dad.

_My father finally looks up, and I can see his brown eyes slowly zeroing in on me, comprehension dawning, like a lens that was zoomed out and has been brought back into focus._

**My father:** Varian. Merry Christmas. You’re up early.

**Me:** Merry Christmas to you, too, but Dad...

_I trail off. I don't have the heart to tell him, in this moment, that I'm always up this early. I have a strange feeling in my gut like this would upset him, the reminder that he does not know me as well as he thinks he does anymore._

**My father:** Right.

_He clears his throat._

**My father:** I was just looking at the snow.

_I'm not really sure what he expects me to say to this. He's not giving me a lot to work with. Words fail me._

**Me:** ...Oh.

**My father, somewhat awkwardly:** Yes, well...it reminds me--it reminds me of _her_. And you. You know…

_It is his turn to trail off, but it doesn't matter, because I know what he’s about to say. The words are so drummed into my head that I could recite them in my sleep._

**My father, continuing:** The day that you were born was the second coldest I’ve ever weathered.

_I swallow. My heart pangs in my chest._

_He then launches into the story of my birth, telling me how I was unexpected because he and my mother didn’t think they could have children and how from conception to birth it was an extremely difficult pregnancy. He tells me of how they got snowed in on the way to the hospital and so he had to deliver me in the backseat of their range rover. He laughs with relief and wipes a tear away as he recants how they thought at first that I was dead, since I came out silent as the grave and with the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. He insists that Mom looked on with tears frozen in her eyes, hopeful and terrified, as he unwrapped the bindings and rubbed my back with his hand, trying to stimulate my heart, and how it worked and I cried for three hours straight afterwards. He tells me that the story made it onto the news, and all the doctors told them I was a miracle child. He laughs and jokes that it wasn’t enough for me to scare the living daylights out of them when I was born, oh no, that I just had to be a pain in the butt from then on. He says that I was talking and walking much earlier than expected, getting into things I wasn’t supposed to, taking apart household items and putting them back together as something new entirely, figuring out how to get out of my crib and wandering off to heaven knows where while they frantically searched the neighborhood for me. The whole thing would be charming, I suppose, if not for what comes next._ ]

 

Okay, before we carry on with the scene, here’s an important note. Remember when I said ‘we’ll get to that’?

Well, (and buckle up because this is a real kicker) my dad likes to completely ignore my next question and act like the entire conversation never even happened. Cute, right?

I suppose I should wrap up the scene. 

[ _Setting: Still the Living Room_

_My father and I are sizing each other up, because we both know what’s about to happen and we’re both wondering the same thing: is this the year where someone gives? Will I quit asking? Or will he finally come clean? The anxiety stretching between us is tangible._

**Me:** …

**My father:** …

**Me, with a heavy sigh because I know what’s coming:** What was the first coldest day?

_I know he won't answer me. I don't really expect him to. I watch a fly buzz feebly on the windowsill as the silence presses in on us both._

**My father:** I’d better get started on breakfast.

_Quirin, exit stage left_

_He walks away to begin preparation of the usual cinnamon rolls, hot cocoa and bacon that has become our traditional Christmas morning meal, leaving me alone in the room to endure the silence, my only company the burning question floating tantalizingly at the edge of my mind, torturing me with its vague familiarity: is this about how Vivienne Quinn Saberhagen died?_ ]

 

And just like that, the scene is over.

The illusion is broken.

My fists clench so hard at my sides that my knuckles become white.

How long am I meant to endure this mental torture? I’m not stupid, and I’m not a child anymore.

Because I know that the answer to that question hovering on the outskirts of my consciousness is a resounding yes. I can guarantee that it must have something to do with my mother’s death. But why can I not remember it? I remember literally everything else, my memory being photographic.

I can recall the very shade of the tips of the blades of grass on the field of my elementary school on the day of my very first science expo. I can remember the exact expression on our neighbor’s face the first time I skinned my knee in front of the house and she ran over, ushering me back to my home and making clucking noises like a nervous mother hen. I can remember the color of Rapunzel’s lip gloss, the band name on Cass’s tee shirt, the shaving cut on Eugene’s chin, and the way Lance laughed on the day that I first met each of them, respectively.

But I cannot remember how the woman who gave me life died? The strange thing is I remember everything leading up to it because it was the day that my family got lost in Dead Man’s Gorge. It was a day for Old Corona’s record books. The temperatures had reached an all time low, and the blizzards were some of the fiercest in history. But that wasn’t the weirdest part. No, the thing that had the entire community buzzing, the reason that the news teams flocked to the canyons and that the general populace’s expectations had been blown out of the water was that all of this had happened in the middle of summer. People around these parts still talk about it to this day.

Except for me and my dad.

We don’t talk about anything real anymore.

No, now we maintain the illusion of a happy family while he brings people with more baggage into it and barks at me for being inquisitive and for taking risks.

In other words, for being me.

Because I remind him of her.

Because she’s gone and never coming back.

My parents and I had been on a nature hike when we had been caught up in a tempestuous gale that seemed neverending, and had made me wonder if I had only imagined the concepts of warmth or joy as the storm rolled in and I had huddled between them, violently trembling.

But before I delve further into that, I need to back up a bit.

See, my mom had been curious, too. She had a hunger for learning that could never be quite satiated, and though my dad, calm and unchanging as a rock, could never quite understand her, he loved her more than anything else in the cosmos so he went along with all of her hair-brained schemes.

Here’s where my memory gets fuzzy, but I’ll do my best. My mom had been to Dead Man’s Gorge before. She loved to study the unique ecosystem there, with its rugged plants and animals that against all odds withstood everything the extreme habitat could throw at them and managed to become their own thriving little world, separate from the rest of the wildlife in the area. So when she returned home one fateful day in June, flyaway red hair sticking up everywhere, a breathless smile on her freckled face and a manic gleam in her turquoise eyes as she clutched her sketchbooks and research journals close, it was a pretty common sight. That day was different, though. That was the day she discovered something new. 

I wish I could remember just what it was. It’s so close, I can taste it but I just...can’t...UGH!

Anyway, she persuaded my dad to come along with her that weekend. Originally, I had been meant to stay with a sitter but she had cancelled last minute. Something about her park ranger boyfriend injuring himself or something. My dad thought it best to reschedule, but my mom was adamant, and she got her way in the end. She was charming like that. So, they brought me along. The idea was a nice little family nature stroll where my dad could watch me while my mom sketched out and took notes on whatever she was investigating.

Yeah, that wasn’t what happened. The night before the excursion is the last concrete memory I have of her.

I was five, and I remember I’d been having nightmares, so I was sitting up in my bed, eyes wide with horror, when she had come in to check on me, as she periodically did. Startled that I was still awake, her face had immediately become concerned. “Oh, baby boy, what’s wrong?” She had asked, flipping on the light and closing the distance between the door and my bed in a few quick strides. She had then sat down on the bed and swept me up in her arms in one fluid movement, the small twin mattress dipping a little, unused to the extra weight. I remember shaking my head, not wanting to tell her about the dreams because it meant reliving them. She hadn’t pressed me. She was great like that. I remember she smelled like baby powder and cinnamon and how she was so very, very warm as I snuggled into her and she began to sing a lullaby to me. It was the same lullaby that my dad says she sang to me almost every night since I was born.

Her singing voice was lovely, and had a bit of a country lilt to it as she sang out:

_“Why do birds suddenly appear Every time you are near?_

_Just like me, they long to be Close to you._

_Why do stars fall down from the sky Every time you walk by?_

_Just like me, they long to be Close to you.”_

_“On the day that you were born,_

_The angels got together,_

_And decided to create a dream come true_

_So they sprinkled moondust in your hair,_

_And golden starlight in your eyes of blue.”_

I remember that this second bit was the part where I would always begin to drift off, so I would consistently carry it with me into my dreams.

_“That is why all the girls in town Follow you all around Just like me, they long to be Close to you.”_

I’m um...I’m sorry. I’m getting a little emotional here.

Where was I? Oh, right. So she sang the song to me and I fell fast asleep, untroubled and blissful once more.

But it was a lie. The calm before the storm, if you will.

Because before the end of the following day, our family would be reduced in size, and several months later I would be holding my dad’s hand, both of us clad in black, watching a walnut coffin slowly sink into the ground. The day of the excursion began sunny, bright, and full of promise. No one saw the blizzard coming, because, well, why would they? Who honestly expects a snowstorm in June? Again, my memory becomes next to useless here because I remember only some things about that day. I remember riding on my dad’s shoulders as he followed my mom around and I remember her taking notes and drawing things, chattering animatedly. I remember them tossing theories back and forth and me chiming in with my two cents on practically every issue in a haughty and proud tone, but I don’t remember exactly when the blizzard hit or what we were doing when it did.

I just remember it being so very bone chillingly cold. And then...nothing. Just endless, white nothing.

Then death. Black as night death. A sea of ebony umbrellas and dresses and suits.

**And then never feeling cold again.**

My father, after all this time, still will not clarify for me exactly what happened, or if I’m correct in hypothesizing that the first coldest day he ever weathered was the day we lost my mother.

You’ll have to forgive me. Our time is up. Something’s penetrating my chest cavity with enough force to stun an elephant and to be honest it hurts like hell. I think I’m waking up.

Have you ever felt the nagging sensation that you are reliving a memory within a dream but it takes a longer than normal amount of time to fully possess you, like a medicine gradually losing its effect? Has it ever gripped your barely beating heart in fear when you begin to actually grasp the fact that everything we think we know as human beings could be a mirage and you might never realize it until you reach out for it and your fingertips catch nothing? Have you ever experienced the simultaneous pain and joy of opening your eyes after dying twice in 24 hours, and thinking, somewhat hysterically, that the feeling of your eyelids being this heavy as you struggle to open them is a memory you will cherish because it means you actually got to wake up? Have you ever seen sinister black obelisks clustering at the corners of the last remaining edges of your erratic dreamscape, taunting you with the knowledge of something you’ve only begun to understand your connection to and tried desperately to swallow the blind panic rising within your core because you have come to understand that you were never in control at all?

I have.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my friend CJ for your concrit and thank you to my friend Danni for proofreading.


End file.
